Franz Pöggeler

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Franz Pöggeler (born December 23, 1926 in Letmathe , now the city of Iserlohn ; † October 31, 2009 in Aachen ) was a German educator , especially for adult education as well as leisure and adventure education .

Life

After his school days and subsequent one-year military service, Pöggeler began a catechetics course in September 1945 to give religious instruction at the St. Bonifatius Religious College in Elkeringhausen near Winterberg and completed this three months later with the missio canonica exam . This was followed by studying philosophy , education and psychology at the Philipps University of Marburg . In 1949 Pöggeler was promoted to Dr. phil. in pedagogy, German and English and completed his first state examination in the same year. In parallel, he finished in the same period a legal additional studies in administration , heads of state and international law and also joined this in 1949 with a thesis on the topic: causes of the emergence of totalitarian systems of government since World War II on, for which he of the annual price of Law and Political Science Faculty. Subsequently, until 1951, Pöggeler was taken on as a research assistant in the pedagogical department of the Philosophical Department of the same university. During this time he began his numerous study trips, which took him to France, Italy, Denmark and, with a scholarship from the British Council, to the University of Bristol and Oxford University . In later years further research stays in over 40 countries in Europe, America, Africa and Asia followed; his travels officially took him to Israel more than 20 times.

On April 1, 1951, he became a research assistant for Wilhelm Flitner at the Department of Educational Sciences at Hamburg University . In 1953 he was hired as a lecturer at the German Institute for Scientific Pedagogy in Münster (at the same time co-founder and managing director of the Institute for Adult Education at his institute) and was given a substitute professorship at the Paderborn Pedagogical Academy . On July 1, 1957, Pöggeler finally worked at the Trier University of Education, where he headed the chair for systematic and historical pedagogy until 1962.

Then Pöggeler moved to the Pädagogische Hochschule Rheinland, Aachen department , where he was appointed full professor for general education on April 1, 1962 and, as the successor to Gustav Siewerth, was also promoted to director of the seminar for education and philosophy . He stayed at this university until it was dissolved, holding the office of dean from 1966 to 1968 and then that of vice dean until 1970. In the course of the affiliation of the various universities of education to the scientific universities of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Aachen department of the Rhineland University of Education was transferred to RWTH Aachen with effect from April 1, 1980 , and Pöggeler was here with his retirement on March 1, 1992 previous functions taken over. In his last four years of service he was also the rector's representative for senior studies . As a professor emeritus he stayed as a guest lecturer at Charles University in Prague for two semesters and was still a popular speaker at symposia at home and abroad.

Franz Pöggeler was involved in numerous social projects in the Holy Land . In 1972 Franz Pöggeler was appointed Knight of the Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher by Cardinal Grand Master Maximilien Cardinal de Fürstenberg and on December 9, 1972 in the Aachen Imperial Cathedral by Lorenz Cardinal Jaeger , Grand Prior of the German Lieutenancy, and Hermann Josef Abs , Lieutenant in Germany, invested. He was most recently an officer of the order.

Franz Pöggeler was married to Hanna Geerken, also one of Flitner's students, and the father of five sons. The philosopher Otto Pöggeler is his cousin. Franz Pöggeler found his final resting place in the Aachen forest cemetery .

Professional activity

Early on, Pöggeler recognized the “school-heavy” pedagogy and therefore reinforced his research in the field of “educational anthropology ”, his self-chosen generic term for the areas from extracurricular youth welfare to andragogic , particularly encouraged by his teacher Flitner in Hamburg . Pöggeler was one of the initiators and advocates of " lifelong learning ". For him, this included gerontagogical studies, youth and leisure pedagogical research as well as linking educational issues with ethical, religious and ideological topics. In addition to Flitner's suggestions, Pöggeler benefited above all from his acquaintances with the two guest professors Paul Tillich and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, who emigrated to the USA before the war, as well as from Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster , Friedrich Schneider and Martin Buber , but also from the thoughts on Existential education by Gabriel Marcel , Karl Jaspers and Peter Wust .

Pöggeler's pedagogical research, theses and visions had an influence on the educational policy of the last 50 years and especially with regard to the changed society, in which more and more people are forced to go through a second educational path , retraining and qualitative advanced training or to continue their education into old age to receive age-appropriate further training for the time of their retirement - for example through senior studies. It was the purpose of his numerous publications to provide the relevant trainers and teachers, as well as managers and officials, with pedagogical tools in order to achieve these goals. In this context, Pöggeler was actively involved in various expert commissions of the federal and state governments, but also in employers ' and workers' associations as well as several professional associations and was significantly involved in the creation of numerous innovations in education , defense , family and youth policy .

He started with his reform ideas in the mainstream school and saw the school as a solidarity community of society . He advocated the practice of mental, social and just teaching as an aid to the life of the pupils, taking into account the relationship between school and life success and not only focusing on the objective of the learning performance. He had also been an advocate of ethics as a teaching subject in schools since 1971 , in order to better involve students who are not affiliated with the church in view of the increasing secularization of society. The avowed Catholic Pöggeler nevertheless saw himself in harmony with the Church when he stated in his publications that the Catholic Church as a universal church for all people - regardless of belonging to ethnic groups , cultures, states or classes - is one of charity, solidarity and Peace-oriented education with the provision of equal learning and life opportunities demands and that education for Christians is one of several possible forms of realization of salvation to which all people have a right.

Pöggeler was one of the initiators of Christian adult education after 1945, which was prohibited in the Third Reich because it contradicted the ideas of this system. It was therefore Pöggeler's motivation to present Christianity as a worldwide movement and as an alternative to nationalism and racism, which among other things had caused the Second World War , in his writings. Through his membership in several church associations and committees, he campaigned for a new Christian adult education within the framework of an internal church reform as a strengthening of the religious maturity of lay people as well as for enlightened believers who would like to learn to practice Christian principles in all areas of life. In this context, from 1962 to 1975, he was a permanent advisor to the school advisor of the German Bishops' Conference , Bishop Johannes Pohlschneider from Aachen, in matters of educational policy , and influenced important decisions in the cooperation between church and state.

Although, as an avowed pacifist, he had initially resisted working in the Bundeswehr , he finally gave up his concerns and worked part-time for 23 years until his retirement on the Advisory Board of Internal Management at the Federal Ministry of Defense . During this time, it was thanks, among other things, to his cooperation that, despite conservatively thinking officers, the introduction of democratic and political training in the Bundeswehr also proved its worth alongside the specialist topics, whereby every conscript could demand to be treated just as democratically as the people in the armed forces School and vocational training and thus in his position as a citizen in uniform was strengthened. For his services in this area, the then Defense Minister Gerhard Schröder (CDU) offered him a high office in the ministry, which Pöggeler declined in favor of his further university career.

In the area of ​​family education, Pöggeler pointed out the necessary restructuring early on. In the 1970s, for example, he advocated improvements in the Bundestag Enquete Commission for Women and Society as well as in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia , such as the introduction of a state-required parental leave for mothers or fathers, a job guarantee after the active motherhood phase has ended upon return to the learned profession and the introduction of a combination of work and family activities. In addition, he was committed to the introduction of all-day schools, including offers for healthy eating, social care and leisure activities, and the supervision and accompaniment of schoolwork by appropriate teachers. In this context, he was co-founder and head of the parents 'school at the Volkshochschule Duisburg and the Aachen parents' seminar, which among other things serve the qualification of parents in school and classroom care , the preparation for marriage and partnership as well as the further training of grandparents and child minders in family educational assistance. The topic here is fathers education under the new fathers' rights movement believed to have been first introduced by Pöggeler in the educational science literature. In addition, he was involved as a co-founder of the monthly magazines Life and Education and Parents' Forum , where he headed the Scientific Advisory Board for many years.

Pöggeler saw his commitment to general pedagogy as a political and comparative science, which stands for the interdependence of cultures, the exchange of ideas and values, the globalization of life and a peaceful world order, as well as what Pöggeler calls " World Pedagogy ”. With the experience of his numerous study trips, he committed himself through persistent endeavors to cooperation between Israel and the Arab states, in particular with Egypt, and also supported a cooperation project House of Peace at St. Catherine's Monastery on the Sinai Peninsula between Israeli, Egyptian and German youth. He received constructive support from the long-time director of the Martin Buber Institute for Adult Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , Kaiman Yaron, with whom he has had a long friendship since 1969. In this context, he advocated regular youth exchanges between the East and West blocs that existed until 1990.

In turn, his worldwide commitment to youth hostels , which began in the 1960s, fits in with this , since young people have to be accepted as guests here regardless of religion, political attitude, race, nationality or social origin. Pöggeler had repeatedly complained about the educational function of the youth hostels against tendencies towards harsh commercialization and, during his time as the long-term federal chairman of the German Youth Hostel Association, implemented intensive pedagogical training and further education for the full-time employees and also achieved an adaptation of the structural forms to the criteria of the new leisure education.

This resulted in his bridging to leisure and adventure education, not only for young people, but also for adults and entire families, also with regard to more and more free time, be it through the partially introduced 35-hour week, through more frequent and longer unemployment or also through an earlier and earlier retirement. In doing so, Pöggeler understood leisure education to be critical-reflexive and not naive and affirmative and supported its own institutions of leisure education and training. According to Pöggeler, recreational education should not degenerate into niche education, but should be integrated into the general understanding of education in a contemporary way.

Since his student years, Pöggeler has been regarded as a tireless author and editor of numerous publications, some in multiple volumes, some of which have been translated into more than 10 languages, as well as individual articles in renowned specialist journals. He dealt extensively with the various subject areas of his entire research spectrum, but also wrote extensive analyzes of the work and theses of those people who were and are important for his topic and professional development, such as Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster , Giovanni Bosco and Julius Streicher . Another important area of ​​his work was the history of pedagogy, presented, among other things, in his main work on the history of adult education with the four sub-areas: epochal, institutional, personal and motive history or in the anthology Adult Education in a Changing Society - From People's Education for permanent education.

In keeping with his profession, Pöggeler has been an enthusiastic collector of books for children and young people and, above all, school books and teacher portraits, but also documents on school buildings, certificates, descriptions of the fate of students and teachers in epic and poetry as well as numerous pictorial documents since his youth . Similar to the photo archive Photo Marburg of his former teacher Richard Hamann there , Pöggeler also wanted to document his collection publicly, but this has so far failed due to financial and institutional commitments. In contrast, the smaller archive he arranged for school and educational history with around 23,000 individual copies, mainly from the period since 1700 and older , was finally transferred to the school book collection of the Bavarian School Museum in Ichenhausen by contract with the Bavarian National Museum on December 21, 1994 and is probably the largest private historical school book collection in Germany. Associated with this was the establishment of an international society for textbook research. V. Pöggeler also made this topic his own and was therefore also involved in projects to examine the economy and family in school books, which served to overcome prejudices or long outdated models in these areas of life. In his writings published on this topic, he often described the attempts to exert influence by institutions that want to propagate their models in new school books as a problem and therefore called for independent textbook research and an interdisciplinary approach.

Memberships and functions (selection)

Honors (selection)

Works (selection)

  • Holderlin and Klopstock . Marburg, Phil. Faculty, Diss. March 21, 1949.
  • The pedagogy of Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster - A systematic representation. Herder, Freiburg 1957.
  • Introduction to andragogy - basic questions of adult education. Henn, Ratingen near Düsseldorf 1957.
  • Hohenrodt - To demythologize a term . Book review on Henningsen 1958 From: Adult Education Jg. 4 (1958), pp. 134-136.
  • New houses for adult education. Henn, Ratingen near Düsseldorf 1959.
  • with Langenfeld, Ludwin; Welzel, Gotthard (ed.) (1961): In the service of adult education. Commemoration for Rudolf Reuter on the completion of his 70th year on July 29, 1961. Osnabrück: A. Fromm, p. 340
  • Parents as educators - little education for parents. (= Fromm's pocket books Contemporary Christianity. Volume 22). Osnabrück 1962.
  • Man in Maturation and Maturity - An Anthropology of Adults. (= Writings on pedagogy and catechetics. Volume 11). Schöningh, Paderborn 1964.
  • Catholic Adult Education - A Contribution to its History 1918–1945. Kösel, Munich 1965.
  • Methods of adult education - with detailed personal and Subject index. Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1965.
  • Education by Faith. Pastoral care publishing house, Freiburg im Breisgau 1968.
  • Concrete Annunciation - Methods of Pastoral Word Service. Pastoral care publishing house, Freiburg im Breisgau 1970.
  • with Otto Wien: Adult education in the changing society - from popular education to éducation permanente. Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main 1971, ISBN 3-400-00132-5 .
  • Soldiers of democracy - the Bundeswehr in society and the state. Bernard & Graefe, Frankfurt am Main 1973, ISBN 3-7637-5118-1 .
  • Pedagogical training of NCOs - a model. Federal Ministry of Defense, Headquarters of the Armed Forces, Bonn 1976.
  • Leadership in the Bundeswehr - training of superiors in the Bundeswehr in the field of leadership. Federal Ministry of Defense, Headquarters of the Armed Forces I 4, Bonn 1980.
  • Politics in the textbook. Federal Agency for Political Education, Bonn 1980, ISBN 3-923423-40-3 .
  • Adult Education Manual . with the assistance and advice of Hans-Ulrich Amberg. 8 volumes. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart.
  • Youth tourism between education and commerce. German Jugendherbergswerk, Detmold 1986.
  • Youth without a future - future without youth? - Pedagogical and educational policy consequences of population development. Institute for Adventure Education, Lüneburg 1988, ISBN 3-929058-31-6 .
  • On the interdependence of religion and education - a problem of educational science. In: Rainer Lachmann, Horst F. Rupp (Hrsg.): Way of life and religious education. Religious Education as an Autobiography. Volume 1, Deutscher Studien Verlag, Weinheim 1989, ISBN 3-89271-173-9 , pp. 265-288.
  • Leisure time - age - lifetime. German Society for Leisure Time, Erkrath 1989.
  • Education for one world - a plea for a pragmatic peace education. Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Bern / New York / Paris 1990, ISBN 3-631-41941-4 .
  • The teacher Julius Streicher: on the personnel history of National Socialism. Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Bern / New York / Paris 1991, ISBN 3-631-41752-7 .
  • Education Union in United Germany - Perspectives for a Fundamental Reform. Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Bern / New York / Paris 1992, ISBN 3-631-44368-4 .
  • Image and education - contributions to the foundation of an educational iconology and iconography . Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Bern / New York / Paris 1992, ISBN 3-631-43694-7 .
  • Power and impotence in education, 1945 to 1993 - in the field of tension between education, politics and society. an experience report. Olzog, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7892-8660-5 .
  • Adult education as a bridge to a wider Europe. Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Bern / New York / Paris 1996, ISBN 3-631-49342-8 .
  • Grew up in two realms - childhood and youth 1926 to 1945. Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Bern / New York / Paris 2009, ISBN 978-3-631-58597-9 .

Literature and Sources

  • Björn Paape: Lifelong learning in research and teaching by Franz Pöggeler. In: Björn Paape, Karl Pütz: The future of lifelong learning. Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Bern / New York / Paris 2009, ISBN 978-3-631-39087-0 , pp. 13–53.
  • Barbara Wolandt: Responsibility and Society - On Franz Pöggeler's Theory. Part I. In: Philosophischer Literaturanzeiger. Volume 40, Issue 3, 1987, pp. 295-311; Part II: Volume 40, Issue 4, 1987, pp. 405-417.
  • Monika Chatty, Franz Hargasser (Ed.): From the Century of Children to the Century of the Elderly? Festschrift for Franz Pöggeler on retirement. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Bern / New York / Paris / Vienna 1992.
  • Klaus Lumma (Ed.): Advice in the knowledge society. Festschrift for Franz Pöggeler on his 75th birthday. Institute for Humanistic Psychology, Eschweiler 2002.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Federal Gazette . Vol. 25, No. 159, August 25, 1973.
  2. ↑ AAS 89 (1997), n.7, p. 517.
  3. ^ International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame
personal data
SURNAME Pöggeler, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German university professor of education
DATE OF BIRTH December 23, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Letmathe , now Iserlohn
DATE OF DEATH October 31, 2009
Place of death Aachen